Shopping carts are in widespread use in supermarkets, hardware stores, and other similar and dissimilar establishments. Generally, a shopping cart has a wheeled chassis, a handle mounted to the chassis, and a wire or plastic basket supported by the chassis. It is known to provide the basket with a front gate, which is openable to facilitate unloading the contents of the basket from the front of the basket.
According to a commonly used design for the front gate, a gate panel made of welded wires and provided with lower hinge pintles and upper latch ears is mounted to the front edges of the side panels so as to permit a checker or a shopper to open the front gate, by raising the gate panel for a sufficient distance to permit the latch ears to clear upper latch fittings on the front edges of the side panels and swinging the gate panel outwardly and downwardly on the hinge pintles. Similarly, a shopper may open the front gate to permit the basket to hold an elongate load, which would not fit into the basket if the front gate were closed.
Although such a gate has proved to be generally satisfactory, it is been found that the gate panel can be inadvertently jostled so as to be upwardly moved for a sufficient distance to permit the latch ears to clear the fittings and the gate panel to swing so that the contents of the basket can spill, particularly when the shopping cart is moved over a curb or along a rough surface.
This invention has resulted from efforts to provide, for a shopping cart, a basket having a front gate that does not open inadvertently when the shopping cart is moved over a curb or along a rough surface.